You turn your head for one moment to focus on turkey and stuffing, and all of the sudden the Syrian Civil War restarts.
The conflict which erupted during the 2011 Arab Spring, and which over the course of a decade killed over half a million people, has been static since early 2020.
By then, secular dictator Bashar al-Assad regained control over a majority of the country and its major cities, and had even begun the process of normalizing relations with his neighbors and reintroducing himself into the international community. The remnants of the Islamist opposition were isolated in the northwest Idlib province, protected by Turkey, their most significant benefactor.
And of course, there’s still close to 1,000 American soldiers occupying the northeast of Syria, monitoring oil fields and giving cover to local Kurds who still dream of an independent state.
Last week as the United States was tucking into dinner, the rebels suddenly broke out of Idlib and went on a rampage, restarting active fighting. They even captured the city of Aleppo with relative ease; this major city had been in their possession for several years at the start of the civil war, and it took immense bloodshed for the Assad regime to recapture it by December 2016, what had originally been seen as the turning point in the war.
The spearhead of this new assault is a group called Tahrir al-Sham, founded in 2017 by Abu Mohammad al-Julani. Julani is the previous leader of the al-Nusra Front, Syria’s now defunct Al Qaeda affiliate; he had sworn an oath of loyalty to Ayman al-Zawahiri, the butcher of New York City and Osama bin Laden’s successor (until he was assassinated by the U.S. in 2022).
Groups among the Syrian opposition have gone through continual rebrands for over a decade, but the core fact remains: they are Islamic extremists, head choppers with close association to the most despicable enemies of the United States.
The Syrian Army has promised a counterattack, and their Russian allies have already launched airstrikes against the rebels. But with Vladimir Putin fighting his make-or-break war in Ukraine, it’s very unlikely Assad will receive the same helping hand from Russia he relied on from 2015-2017 to stay alive.
Finally, the most important question: where does this leave the United States?
Congress has never voted to go to war in Syria. The White House claims that Joe Biden is gifted the power to deploy a thousand American soldiers to Syria inherently by Article II. Can any of us act surprised that this administration displays only contempt for the Constitution and the law?
Our involvement in Syria is illegal, plain and simple. The country is a ruined backwater, with a government that poses no threat to the American people or our national interests. But there is an active threat to the safety of our troops, who ought to be withdrawn immediately.
Many of those soldiers are members of the National Guard, and their withdrawal would be mandatory if their home states passed the Defend the Guard Act, requiring a declaration of war by Congress. My organization Bring Our Troops Home has overseen the introduction of this bill into over half the state legislatures in the country.
It was Barack Obama’s decision to fund and arm the Islamist opposition that exacerbated the Syrian Civil War, which otherwise may have ended as early as 2013. His administration funneled over a billion dollars into the war, most of which landed in the pockets of men like al-Julani and other Al Qaeda allies.
And it was Donald Trump’s decision in early 2017 to cut off the money spigot and stop funding terrorists that put America First. And Trump’s instincts were correct in the fall of 2018 when he wanted to pull out of Syria completely; he should have stuck to his guns instead of folding.
There are reports that Tahrir al-Sham was given the greenlight to attack by Turkey—our NATO ally—and it’s unknown whether any of this operation was coordinated to happen simultaneously with the faltering ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon.
Is Joe Biden continuing the policy of his predecessor, and giving intelligence or diplomatic cover to these terrorists so the subsequent turmoil makes things more difficult for Donald Trump as he reenters office? That’s conjecture at the moment; but would it surprise you?
The fact is that the Defend the Guard movement is the key to opposing further U.S. involvement in Syria and ending our endless wars abroad.
